1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a file generating method to be applied to generation of a file, and a file retrieving method to be applied to retrieval of such a file.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the case where stereo-photographing is carried out by using two digital cameras, two image data items can be respectively generated from left and right visual points. U.S. Pat. No. 3,081,675 proposes a technique in which in the case where such image data items are transferred to a personal computer (PC) or the like as an image file, and are managed thereby, stereo images (a pair of images) and a monocular image (one image) can be clearly distinguished from each other, and the pair of images can be correctly retrieved and reproduced. In the technique proposed by U.S. Pat. No. 3,081,675, when a stereo file is generated, a code indicating that the file is a stereo file, a code indicating whether an image is an image generated from a left visual point or an image from a right visual point, and a code indicating the frame number of a picked-up stereo image, etc. are written to a header information portion of the stereo file.